Petition: Police Said 69 Dead Cats. Then They Counted Again and Found 86.

When Alvarado police first released the figures from the house on West Jessup Street, they said 69 dead cats. Days later they revised it. The final count from that search warrant, executed in July 2026 in this small Johnson County town, was 86 dead cats, 77 live ones and six dogs, and conditions inside were bad enough that investigators had to wear specialised protective equipment to enter and document the scene. Michael Stephen Morton, 39, and Lisa Faye Griggs, 38, have been arrested and charged with animal cruelty. Please sign the petition calling for the maximum charges the evidence supports.

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The number climbing after the fact is the part worth sitting with, because it tells you something about how these situations are found. Police executed the warrant following an investigation, and the count rose as officers worked through a property they could not safely process in one pass. This was not a house anyone walked into and immediately understood. Texas law makes cruelty to a non-livestock animal a state jail felony where the animal is killed or seriously injured, and the number of animals involved is a matter for prosecutors rather than a fixed multiplier, which is exactly why per-animal charging decisions are worth public attention while a case is still active. Both people have been charged and neither has been convicted, and both are entitled to due process.

What happens next falls on organisations that did not cause any of it. The surviving animals went to Alvarado Animal Control, with Operation Kindness and Tri-City Rescue providing veterinary care and help clearing shelter capacity. Seventy-seven cats and six dogs arriving at a municipal shelter at once is a cost measured in weeks of staff time, medical treatment and foster placements, absorbed by a small-town facility and the nonprofits who stepped in. That is the pattern in every large seizure and it almost never features in the coverage. Hoarding cases also tend to be charged as a single count regardless of scale, which is the specific thing this petition is pushing against. One Green Planet has covered how to report suspected animal cruelty, and the arrests are reported by CBS News Texas. The investigation remains active, and Alvarado police are asking anyone with information to contact them.

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